It has heretofore been proposed to provide a plastic closure for a container, which comprises a plastic cap or shell with an interior liner for sealing engagement with the sealing surface of the container finish. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,703 discloses aplastic closure that includes a shell having a base wall with a peripheral skirt and an internal thread for securing the closure to a container, and a sealing liner compression molded in situ on the interior of the shell base wall. The sealing liner comprises a blend of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and a thermoplastic elastomer material such as olefin or styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS). U.S. Pat. No. 5,451,360 discloses a method and apparatus for compression molding the liner in situ within the closure shell.
Although the closures and methods of manufacture disclosed in the noted patents address problems theretofore extant in the art, further improvements remain desirable. For example, although olefin copolymers such as EVA are sufficiently resilient to provide good sealing against the sealing surface of a container when the closure is fastened to the container, these materials do not provide an acceptable barrier against transmission of gases, such as oxygen and carbon dioxide, that can deleteriously affect the product within the container. It has been proposed to employ a barrier material such as ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) as a gas transmission barrier liner. However, materials of this character tend to be expensive and brittle, and are not well suited to function as a seal. It is therefore a general object of the present invention, in accordance with one aspect of the invention, to provide a liner for a plastic closure that combines the functions of a seal for engagement with the container sealing surface and an improved barrier against gas transmission, flavor absorption (flavor scalping) and/or water vapor permeation. Other objects of the invention, in accordance with other aspects of the invention, are to provide a method of making such a closure and a package that includes such a closure.